Aperture Science Extended Relaxation Center

The Aperture Science Extended Relaxation Center is a section within the Aperture Science Enrichment Center where test subjects are accomodated via long-term cryogenic statis (or long-term relaxation) before and after they are put through their respective testing courses.

Although the Relaxation Center was never mentioned nor seen in Portal, it is the first location in the single-player campaign of Portal 2, where Chell is awakened by a distressed Wheatley in the chapter, The Courtesy Call

The Relaxation Center serves as a housing bay for dedicated test subjects, where they are put through long-term cryogenic hibernation within their Extended Relaxation Chambers, life supported containers that can be moved along a rail and which the interior resemble cheap motel rooms with 1970s decor and appliances that date from the late 1970s to early 1990s (the "packing date" of one chamber, shown below, is 1976), meant to comfort test subjects during their years of stay. The cargo containers housing Relaxation Chambers can be moved by personality cores, in which they are to enter the premises of the room and begin maneuvering the rails lifting up the Relaxation Chamber away from its docking bay and into a testing track. Once the chamber has been brought near a testing track, the subject will be deployed into a short-term stasis bed housed inside a Relaxation Vault. From there, test subjects will be awakened immediately at the start of their testing course.

The Extended Relaxation Center during the events of Portal 2, in terms of arrangement, appears to spot a "document stack" order, where Relaxation Chamber containers are randomly stashed against, above, or beside others without proper arrangements. It appears to be a large compound with thousands of docked containers housing test subjects in their respective Extended Relaxation Chambers. The Relaxation Chambers consist of life support generators that can be powered entirely by the facility's overseer, GLaDOS. With the destruction of GLaDOS, these chambers slowly depleted in life support over the years and as a result, thousands of test subjects had died overtime. Chell was able to last thousands of years in stasis after the events of Portal at the hands of Doug Rattmann, who had cut all cryogenic supplies from the entire facility and into Chell's Relaxation Chamber.

Under protocols, test subjects would regularly be awakened every 50 days in the Relaxation Chamber to prevent physical and mental deterioration. Either GLaDOS or the Announcer are connected into the Relaxation Chambers to guide test subjects through their rough awakening after a long-term stasis. Due to the lack of GLaDOS' control on the facility during the events of Portal 2, the Announcer will take up the role of awaking test subjects instead. Once test subjects are awake, they are asked to perform physical and mental awareness exercises. In a typical Aperture Science mindset, posters are made nearby the Relaxation Center in the Portal 2: Lab Rat comic to promote usage of cryogenic stasis, claiming it to be "safe & fun". Ironically, a warning label can be found nearby which states that long-term relaxation is not entirely fail-safe, and that test subjects may die in the process.

List of appearances

 * Portal 2 - Chapter 1 : Introduction
 * Portal 2: Lab Rat
 * The Final Hours of Portal 2

Trivia

 * Several unused models related to an earlier version of Chell's Relaxation Chamber can still be found in the game's files.
 * At the early stages of the Portal 2 development, the Relaxation Center was a decorative island with palm trees and a bar-like resort, where the movement of Test subjects were limited with glass panels, before the palm trees and bar-like resort "folds itself up and closes", enclosing the glass panels, and eventually sending them out of the now empty Relaxation Center through a white rail.
 * The Relaxation Chamber was based on the motel of Super 8.
 * When Chell first awakes, the mural depicts a man sitting on a beach. When she is woken up again, it shows a wolf on the beach howling at a full moon. The painting Chell is required to observe also changes its appearance to a nighttime version, complete with full moon.
 * It is unknown how exactly the Relaxation Chamber's bed puts its Test Subject into stasis, as it does not seem to contain any technology required to sustain the Test Subject's vital functions, unlike the Relaxation Vault bed. It's possible that it is the Relaxation Chamber itself that keeps the Test Subject in stasis.